What does Trump see in Putin?

David Von Drehle

Aug 28, 2019 — 8.15am

I keep expecting President Donald Trump to ditch Vladimir Putin for a younger, more glamorous autocrat, but apparently this is the marriage he intends to take to the grave. What other conclusion can we draw from his obsession with restoring Russia to the Group of Seven?

Reasonable heads of state can see that Putin is a spent force. His popularity is plunging. Protesters routinely swarm the streets of Moscow. The Russian economy is as dead as a Siberian winter. The lame coverup of a recent nuclear accident rings echoes of Chernobyl and the dying gasps of Putin's beloved wreck - the Soviet Union.

At this point, Putin fits better in a Group of Three alongside his friends Bashar Assad, the barrel-bombing butcher of Syria, and Nicolás Maduro, from the failed state of Venezuela.

Russia's inclusion in the group of leading industrial nations in 1997 was intended as a carrot to lure the limping post-Soviet nation toward democracy and free markets. At the time, a case could be made that the former superpower had at least the prospect of becoming an important economic player.

Instead, the overmatched alcoholic Boris Yeltsin permitted the looting of the Russian economy and, in 1999, gave way as Russian president to the former spy from St. Petersburg. Putin brought order to the looting by creating a mafia of oligarchs. He kept the people happy for a while with promises to restore a glory that never was. At 20 years, he has reigned longer than any Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, but with the usual dreary results.

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Today, the case for including Russia at the table of major players is nonexistent.

Measured by total gross domestic product, Russia is not even among the top 10 countries in the world. Measured by per capita GDP, it doesn't make the top 60. And it's going backward.

The purchasing power of the average Russian has fallen by more than 10 per cent over the past five years. In the same period, foreign investment has dropped to virtually nothing while more than $US300 billion ($444 billion) of Russian wealth has been shifted out of the country. These financial trends are a clear vote of no confidence in the future of Putin's leadership.

Moreover, what puny powers Putin does possess are marshalled in direct opposition to the interests of the G7 members - and to the G7 itself.

The point of the annual meetings is to encourage cooperation; Putin seeks to encourage division in the Western alliance.

Hackers linked to the Russian military have interfered in elections in the United States, Britain, France and Italy, according to intelligence agencies. They've targeted energy firms in Germany and stolen cryptocurrency in Japan. The Aspen Security Forum recently heard from Microsoft that only Iran and North Korea are in Russia's league when it comes to being state sponsors of digital mischief.

It's unfortunate that the Trump-Putin romance has been encumbered with so much of the most polarising baggage in America today: the Mueller report, the Steele dossier, the stolen Democratic National Committee emails and so on. While one senses there must be some connection, the exact wiring diagram - if there is one - has not been discovered, despite lots of people looking for it.

During his rambling post-conference remarks, Trump suggested the affection stems somehow from their shared antipathy to former president Barack Obama.

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It was Obama, after all, who kicked Russia out of the club in 2014 as punishment for Putin's annexation of Crimea. In Trump's telling, Putin "outsmarted" Obama with the move - but I don't see what's so smart about inviting international sanctions at a time when prices for your nation's leading exports - fossil fuels - are plunging.

The Trump administration recognises Guaidó as the troubled nation's true leader, yet sat by while Putin's team on the ground reportedly ordered Maduro to hang tough. In the aftermath, Putin instructed the United States to stop interfering in Venezuela, while James Monroe turned somersaults in his grave.

Looking at such an unlikely couple, we wonder what keeps them together. What does Trump see in Putin? Where's the spark?

Some theorise it's all about money.

The Putin mafia has funnelled billions into high-end real estate in major cities around the world, and a pile of it wound up with the Trump Organisation.

During his investigation, then-special counsel Robert Mueller found that Trump was secretly angling to build a Trump tower in Moscow at the same time that he was running for president in 2016.

But maybe they stay together for the sheer outrageousness of the thing, like the retail heiress Chloe Green's now-ended relationship with Jeremy Meeks, a guy Internet-famous for his police mug shot.

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Nothing turns Trump on like getting people to buy balderdash. If he can sell the world on Vladimir Putin's greatness, he can sell anything.

The development of alternative supplies of critical minerals, as well as other joint efforts by Australia and the United States to address Chinese influence in the region, will dominate talks in Washington.